Surging cases deepen woes
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WHO slams slow vaccine rollout in Europe
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India launches biggest vaccination drive yet
Countries have gone back to reimposing lockdowns to curb the spread of coronavirus as cases and deaths surge around the world owing to the new strains of virus.
The Covid-19 death toll spiraled out of control in Brazil in March, more than doubling the country's previous monthly record, officials said Wednesday, as French President Emmanuel Macron announced a limited nationwide lockdown.
In a sign of the devastation the virus is still causing while the world races to roll out vaccines, Brazil reported 66,573 people had died of Covid-19 in March -- more than twice as many fatalities as the country's second-deadliest month of the pandemic, July 2020.
"Never in Brazilian history have we seen a single event kill so many people" in one month, said doctor Miguel Nicolelis, former pandemic response coordinator for Brazil's impoverished northeast.
Germany's capital Berlin will impose a nighttime ban on gatherings from today and reduce the number of children at nursery from next week to try to stop a third wave of the coronavirus pandemic, its city government said yesterday.
In China, which has mostly beaten back the virus, authorities declared a week-long lockdown in the city of Ruili, after six cases were detected near the Myanmar border -- the country's first such move in months.
Greece meanwhile said it would reopen most retail stores and relax leisure restrictions despite high Covid numbers.
And Brisbane, Australia lifted a three-day mini-lockdown it imposed to stop an outbreak that infected 14 people.
At least 2,816,908 people have died of Covid-19 around the world since the outbreak emerged in China in December 2019, according to an AFP tally from official sources.
The WHO yesterday slammed Europe's "unacceptably slow" vaccine rollout and warned of a "worrying" surge in cases.
"Vaccines present our best way out of this pandemic... however, the rollout of these vaccines is unacceptably slow," the World Health Organization's director for Europe Hans Kluge said in a statement.
"We must speed up the process by ramping up manufacturing, reducing barriers to administering vaccines, and using every single vial we have in stock," he added.
India yesterday expanded its vaccination drive to the 45-60 age group as the country tries to tackle a surge in new infections.
Public and private centres offering jabs would be open every day throughout April including on public holidays in a "significant step to exponentially expand the countrywide vaccination drive", the health ministry said.
The increased urgency follows a rise in cases since early February -- when new daily infections dropped below 9,000 -- to more than 72,000 yesterday, the highest level since October.
Experts have warned that infections are increasing at a faster pace compared to last year, when single-day cases peaked at almost 100,000 in September.
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